Farm4Profit Podcast

Time Management and Delegation

Episode Summary

We have the pleasure of talking to Sean Blomgren of Blomgren Seeds about his seed treating process and what is working for him in AG. Then, we dive into the importance of managing your time wisely and how delegating tasks can help boost your bottom line.

Episode Notes

Time Management - delegation

• Introduction
• Reminders:
  • Like, rate, review, share
  • Send to questions farm4profitllc@gmail.com
  • Register for the conference
    • Remember to go out and nominate your farm or someone else’s farm for the  Farm Business Award – application at www.farm4profit.com
• What’s working for Ag – Sean Blomgren – Blomgren Seed
  • Boone County dealer since 1989 carrying Monsanto Hybrids – Dekalb and Asgrow
    • Self Introduction
  • Talking about USC Seed Treating Solutions
    • High quality seed treatment gives the grower the opportunity to customize their chemistry to the challenges they may face or the goals they have in place for their crop.  
    • Not a one size fits all program – prescribing to each individual farm.
  • What about this seed treater has been “Working for your business” – boosting your bottom line?
  • How is this seed treater different from others on the market?
  • How can a farmer incorporate this type of seed treating on their farm to boost their bottom lines?
• Main Topic – Time Management - The only thing we can’t make more of is time.
  • Prioritizing and delegating are two key word concepts that play a big role in gaining more time.  The problem is both of those are very difficult disciplines to master.
  • Brick Theory – Think of your brain as a truck hauling a load of bricks.  Every time you think of something that needs to be done or accomplished you add another brick to the load.  Every time you complete a task you take the brick off the load. Most of the time the pace of the bricks being added to the load is faster than the pace we can complete them and unload.
    • One thing you can do is have a running list of task to be completed.  I use ever note or a shareable note system on my phone. The point of doing this is to keep your mind free of distraction allowing you to be more efficient.  
    • Studies say it takes 15 minutes to refocus on a task once you have been interrupted.  If you have a process in place to write down tasks or store tasks it will minimize distractions.
  • One you have a list of tasks take the time to review them and prioritize them using three categories.  
    • Time sensitive – what must be done first in order for other tasks to fall in place, or because of the time of year (planting), or to keep from something costing more money
    • Will it generate more revenue – or will it become cost savings?
    • Does it need to be completed by me or can someone else do it? – Time is money and your time isn’t free.  This concept of figuring out what your time is worth could be a podcast episode all by itself. Could a hired man or subcontractor handle the task will little guidance?  
  • Place the least desirable tasks first thing in your day.  By doing this you get the things done early before you have a chance to push them off.  Also, if you can have someone else do the work for you that frees up more of your time to do high value tasks resulting in a better return on your time investment.
  • Just because you hire someone else to do it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t cost you more to do it yourself. The key is to be productive while the others are taking care of the task.  Examples
    • Book work – could be your least favorite and trained professionals may do it faster
    • Lawn mowing – could a lower wage per hour handle this
    • Repetitive chores – is this a task you could check in on once a week or every 4 days 
    • Purchasing livestock – genetics are valuable, don’t let someone else screw up the future of you farm.
    • Field prescriptions – who knows your field better than you do
    • Field work – what other management tasks could you be doing for more money
• Summarize
  • Unpack your mind of the floating little reminders by making lists or task buckets. Then you can organize those tasks by importance and what skills are needed to complete them.  Take advantage of a fresh day to knock out the less desirable tasks. This also gives you something to look forward to after they are done, a more fun task. What is the true cost of doing a project yourself versus hiring it done?  The whole key is to make sure your time is spent doing the things that will make your farm more profitable, sometimes that is just thinking and planning for the future.
• Challenge
  • Write down everything you do for 3 weeks.  This will seem like a pain in the ass but it will be a good exercise to see how much is repetitive and what can be delegated or removed.
  • Calculate hourly rate- If you never find yourself with a shortage of things to do take a moment to calculate what your time is worth per hour.  What would someone have to pay you to get you to show up. Then break down the tasks on your to do lists by if you would pay someone that much to do it or not.  The outcome is if you wouldn’t pay someone $30/hour to do that task then you shouldn’t be doing the tasks, hire them done.
  • Build up employees – by assigning responsibility to employees with potential you help them grow and become more productive.  Ultimately getting more out of them for your dollar driving higher levels of farm profitability.
• Conference Update/Reminder – 12/6/2019